Tips and tricks on 21st century Web design techniques

10 Killer Online Tools for Web Designers

by Clay on June 11, 2010

Web design has never been easier. Sure, knowing HTML helps, but with these 10 killer online tools for Web designers, anyone can get in on the fun – and take a few shortcuts.

Pixlr looks a lot like Photoshop, and even more like CorelPainter, and it’s free. The whole thing runs off of a browser, and while it can’t do everything the pricey programs can do, it’s pretty amazing for a free program. It has layers, brushes, and cloning in an easy-to-use layout.

Google Analytics, the most popular free analytics tool, has custom views, adsense integration, and everything you need to keep track of who’s looking, from where, at what, and for how long.

CSS Type Set lets you copy and paste text into one side, modify font, color and size, and spits out the CSS on the other side for use on your website. It’s simple and easy.

Kuler is a web app that lets you look through color palettes created by other people or create your own using a color wheel, harmony rules and color sliders. When you need colors quick, nothing is cooler than Kuler.

Adobe BrowserLab makes it possible to test your new websites in multiple browsers and operating systems. You can ensure that your web site will look good anywhere, on any computer, with any web browser, and it’s a one stop shop.

Pingdom Tools lets you run load time tests on your web sites. It basically copies how your page is loaded in a web browser and times the process, even telling you the order in which objects load.

Are My Sites Up? Is a simple program that tells you if and when your sites go down. The program checks up to five sites at least 25 times a day and notifies you by email if they go down, and sends the HTML status error code of why they went down.

Picreflect is a fun little application that lets you see the reflection of any image, resize the image, make the image transparent or rotate it.

Firebug is a web development tool that runs out of Firefox. It allows you to inspect HTML and modify style and layout, analyze network usage and performance, and is 100% free and open source.New toys and tools pop up every day to make web design easier and more accessible. Whether you’re a web master or total newb, these tools will help you create your vision online.

New toys and tools pop up every day to make web design easier and more accessible. Whether you’re a web master or total newb, these tools will help you create your vision online.